Data communications systems have evolved from simple methods of conveying information. In ancient times messages were carried by word of mouth. Later, messengers on foot carried hand-carved messages on stone tablets. This further evolved, as handwriting developed, to handwritten messages on papyrus, leather and then paper carried by foot messengers and later by messengers on horseback. Already, in those early times, there was a natural limit to the amount of information that any one messenger could carry.
The advent of manual signaling from hilltop to hilltop was followed, with the arrival of electricity on the communication scene, by the electric telegraph. The amount of information that could be conveyed took a quantum leap forward. Again, there was a natural limit to the amount of information that could be carried by this new medium. At the turn of the last century, radio made its first tentative appearance on the communication scene. The flow of information seemed to have taken another quantum leap forward.
In the middle of the last century, with the advent of the first computers and television, the communication age seems to have finally burst through all the limits of previous millennia. The past decade saw increases in the flow of information facilitated by developments of the Internet, cellular telephones and various wireless communication devises. All these have apparently broken prior historic limits to the flow of information. However, this is not the case. Another limit has become apparent, namely the limit of human capacity to peruse this vast flow of information to the point of saturation.
An additional problem has also become apparent with the growth of the Internet and other data communication systems. Communication media are also being used for another purpose, in parallel with transmitting core information. This is the transmission of special messages alongside the core information. Special messages include advertisements, notifications, legal notices, credit warnings and a host of other items. These messages are both single directional or interactive between sender and targeted recipient.
Generally, special messages are carried in a number of media. For example, advertisements are included in newspapers and magazines, on Internet Web sites, over cellular telephone media, radio, television and many others. The amount and proportion of such special messages that can be carried in a media is limited by a number of factors. These include aesthetic, physical and financial considerations. It would seem that these limiting factors may be expressed as the ratio of the amount of special messages to the quantity of core information. When the proportion of non-core information reaches a point of unacceptability to a viewer or reader, this point is termed saturation. Even for a media predicated on 100% special messages, there is a physical upper limit.
Typically, in an Internet Web site, it has become commonplace to have a variety of special messages. These typically include advertisements with or without hyper-linking to other Web sites or other Web pages. In much the same way, magazines and newspapers carry special text and graphic messages in the form of advertisements, legal notices and so on. Again, there is an upper limit, even for print media predicated on 100% special messages.
Either due to physical limitations or due to reaching an unacceptable ratio of special messages to core information, media reach the point of being unable to carry additional special messages. This saturation represents a financially limiting problem to that media after a popular media has a waiting list of advertisement orders. For this reason, many methods are used to try to extend this saturation point, for example, by using hyperlinks on a Web site, by adding supplements to newspapers or magazines, by adding special message supplements to credit card billing and many others. These techniques merely appear to delay the onset of saturation and is often rather ineffective. In some cases, it is undesirable, for financial considerations, to extend the physical size of the media. Therefore, a magazine may be limited to a specific number of pages and a Web site to a specific number of web pages. Equally, it is vital that aesthetics of any media be taken into consideration so that readers or viewers are not overwhelmed with the multiplicity and density of information represented by such saturation, making a media appear unfriendly and overwhelming. There is, then, a need for a method to reach beyond this point of saturation in a media.